IBPS SO Prelims English Language Practice Test - 2

Sakshi Education

Directions (1-8): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
I don’t know what a charger plate does. At first, I thought it was some techno-savvy-Iron-Man thingamadoodle that charged your phone while you ate. Turns out, it’s not that. It’s like a pretty food frame that ludded me and my husband to the point that we bought a ton during the Williams Sonoma 30 percent off clearance sale. While I rifled through and pucked out the least dinged up plates, visions of dinner parties and chilled rose ran through my head. It still didn’t quite understand the purpose of a charger plate (I mean, does anyone?), but I knew they would be set out on a table full of friends at a soon-to-held fabulous gathering.
   It wasn’t until we got home, and I’d washed and stacked them away that I realized we’d bought too many. After all, I could count how many fiends I had close by on one hand. And they were certainly not enough to warrant uselessly pretty chargers. I stood there for a good five minutes in front of the cabinets, bewildered at how much things had changed in six months. Suddenly, I was panicked at the thought of making new friends in adulthood.
   At the time, my husband and I had just moved back home to Atlanta for the start of his orthopaedic surgery residency. We’d met when we were 15 years old (we carpooled together, and he listened to music while I awkwardly pined from the backseat). We started “going out” at 16, attended college together where he ruled the campus and I fell in love with Medieval English, and eventually he proposed in a labyrinth in Portugal. We’d just gotten married, and our whole life stretched out like a tantalizing blank page. I knew how demanding residency would be, and I was determined not to be lonely. Or, worse spend the day plotting new books with only the company of Theodore III, our bread-coloured cat who viewed most of my creative with a mixture of contempt and indifference.
   But making new friends didn’t go as I imagined. On one occasion, an acquaintance emailed asking for career advice and a meeting over drinks. I advised as best as I could, and then eagerly refreshed my inbox, waiting for the aforementioned drink details. I never got them. Then there was the time I tried reaching out to an industry acquaintance only to get a “read” receipt that, 20 days later, remained unanswered. The worst was when a friendly neighbor overshared some of her recent struggles. I overstepped with my advice and attempted to rush to the rescue only to receive a very polite (and appropriate boundary setting) text response. “This is really my fault, sorry. We’re not even close enough for me to be sharing like this with you. “Lol”.

1.   The passage talks about a clearance sale. Which of the following is true about the sale?
a) It was a 40 percent off clearance sale
b) It was a 30 percent off clearance sale
c) It was a 20 percent off clearance sale
d) It was a 10 percent off clearance sale
e) None of the above

2. What does the author not know about or understand?
a) Charger plate
b) Physics
c) Orthopedics
d) Shopping
e) None of the above

3. What made the author panic?
a) The thought of marriage
b) The thought of meeting friends
c) The thought of making new friends in adulthood
d) The thought of travelling alone
e) None of the above

4. At which age did the author and her husband had met?
a) At the age of 11
b) At the age of 12
c) At the age of 13
d) At the age of 17
e) At the age of 15

5. Where did the husband of the author proposed her?
a) In Egypt
b) In Portugal
c) In Greece
d) In Italy
e) None of the above

6. Which of the following word best expresses the meaning of the word “tantalizing” as used in the context of the passage?
a) Relook
b) Uninteresting
c) Exciting
d) Requiring
e) Important

7. Which of the following word best expresses the meaning of the word “bewildered” as used in the context of the passage?
a) Perplexed
b) Contribution
c) Appropriate
d) Discussed
e) Both A and C

8. Which of the following word best expresses the opposite meaning of the word “lol” as used in the context of the passage?
a) Soothe
b) Quite
c) Agitate
d) Hus
e) Both A and C

Directions (9-17): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
It is not easy to do business in India’s second-largest commercial city. We at the Centre for Civil Society undertook a deep dive into the realities of Doing business in Delhi. We found that most of the claims of reforms in Delhi are window-dressing. Our studies find that problems of licence, permit and inspection raj are still stubbornly entrenched in the case of traditional retail services enterprises. Take for example the restaurant sector. Any eating house in Delhi faces cumbersome and often overlapping regulations. An alcohol-serving restaurant needs to acquire 11 licenses (13 if they play recorded music and choose to install a lift) and submit 57 documents before they open shop legally. The process is daunting in the absence of procedural clarity and functional communication channels between the government and enterprises. Little wonder, then that despite contributing 2.1% to India’s gross domestic product (GDP), 66% of the Indian food service market, comprising restaurants, cafes, bars and street kiosk stalls, remains unorganized.
   Our research team found that it takes 120 to 150 days to obtain all the licenses if there is no delay beyond the officially stipulated time and that the formal cost varies from Rs. 18,000 at nearly Rs. 12 lakh. More than half of all respondents in our survey found the overall licensing procedure to be difficult or very difficult to follow. An excise licence, rated the most arduous of all by respondents, costs restaurants anything between Rs. 7.6 lakh and Rs. 18.52 lakh annually. Even if restaurateurs manage to fulfill at the licencing requirements to open, they are plagued by arbitrary changes in rules. Restaurants face frequent and unreasoned government orders that directly and adversely impact their operations.
   Similarly, let us consider the problems of meat processors and retailers. The livestock sector contributes 4.1% to the total GDP of India. Our study finds that in Delhi, a heedless regulatory framework around the production and supply of meat has led to the slaughter and sale of animals outside the _____ of regulations. The New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) both regulates and operates the only slaughterhouse in the state permitted to slaughter buffalo, sheep and goat. This government monopoly alongside the Food Safety and Standards Regulations 2011 on private commercial slaughter have rendered all slaughter of chicken in the city effectively illegal.
   Municipal authorities recognise the egregious violation of the doctrine of separation of powers and the absurdity of effectively banning private slaughter. Authorities follow a keep calm and carry on policy in the city, and 95% if all enterprise in the sector remain either completely or partially unlicensed. But 'informal polices' are ripe opportunities for rentseeking, and Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) regulations still render these shops illegal. Moreover, 72% of licence holders claimed to have paid more than the prescribed cost while obtaining a licence.
   Moreover, we find that there has been no discernible improvements in the inspection regime for service sector enterprises. Corruption, harassment and subversion of rules continue to be rampant. Twenty-eight percent of restaurateurs we surveyed described the intention of inspectors as deliberately finding faults, and 30% felt that inspectors were only concerned with their interests. While inspectors from South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) claim to inspect meta shops once a year, out enterprise surveys indicate a frequency at least 12 times higher. In our mock inspections, only 2.8% of meat shops were complaint with more than 80% of the rules examined. Instead of achieving any measure of compliance, inspections have emerged as flourishing channels of rent-seeking.
   India has seen a dramatic rise in the World Bank's Doing Business rankings. But the measure leaves out the part about small enterprises still struggling in the face of the licence-permit-inspector raj. If this is the state of affairs in Delhi, one can imagine the difficulties of doing business for small entrepreneurs in the rest of India. The distance between the existing regulatory practice standards indicates a need to rethink and redraw both the licensing and inspections rules, particularly at the intersection of local, state and central governments.
The idea behind case of doing business is to first recognise that economic freedom is non-negotiable if human beings are to flourish. by approaching ease of doing business programmatically and with the intent of only making life easier for large business, instead of on principle, we do ourselves great disservice.

9.   What is the author's attitude towards the licence-permit-inspector raj?
a) nonchalant
b) sombre
c) disdainfaul
d) apathetic
e) ebullient